American Musicological Society records Ms. Coll. 221 Finding aid prepared by Rebecca C. Smith, Leah Germer. Last updated on May 12, 2020. University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts 2009 American Musicological Society records Table of Contents Summary Information....................................................................................................................................3 Biography/History..........................................................................................................................................4 Scope and Contents....................................................................................................................................... 8 Administrative Information......................................................................................................................... 19 Controlled Access Headings........................................................................................................................19 Other Finding Aids......................................................................................................................................20 Collection Inventory.................................................................................................................................... 21 Correspondence......................................................................................................................................21 Minutes [Files are restricted for fifty years from the date of their creation]........................................ 60 Member Records....................................................................................................................................60 Committees.............................................................................................................................................64 Publications............................................................................................................................................ 71 Events.....................................................................................................................................................82 Chapters..................................................................................................................................................87 Affiliations............................................................................................................................................. 91 Financial records....................................................................................................................................92 Administrative records...........................................................................................................................94 Special topics......................................................................................................................................... 97 Memorabilia........................................................................................................................................... 98 Oversize..................................................................................................................................................98 Additional material received Spring 2009............................................................................................ 99 - Page 2 - American Musicological Society records Summary Information Repository University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts Creator American Musicological Society. Title American Musicological Society records Call number Ms. Coll. 221 Date [inclusive] 1934-1992 Extent 122 boxes Language English Abstract This collection comprises the administrative records of the Society, reflecting trends in musicological scholarship and academic training through the course of the twentieth century. Included is correspondence with individuals and institutions related to music research, as well as correspondence among officers of the Society and among committees. Also included are minutes, membership records and directories, records of annual meetings, events and chapters, financial and tax records, and miscellaneous administrative records. Publication series contains substantial correspondence with authors and editorial staff regarding scholarly works, including Tischler’s Earliest Motets, the Works of William Billings, Ockeghem’s Works, and the New Josquin Edition. Administrative correspondents include Presidents Charles Seeger, Curt Sachs, Gustave Reese, Donald Grout, William Mitchell, William S. Newman, Oliver Strunk, Jan LaRue, James Haar, Claude Palisca, Margaret Bent, H. Wiley Hitchcock, Janet Knapp, and Lewis Lockwood; Treasurers Otto Albrecht and Paul Henry Lang; Executive Director Alvin Johnson; Secretary Rita Benton; and Members of the Board Nino - Page 3 - American Musicological Society records Pirrotta, Manfred Bukofzer, Alfred Einstein, Arthur Mendel, and Edward Lowinsky. Cite as: American Musicological records, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Biography/History Musicology was a young and relatively unacknowledged field of scholarship in the United States in the 1920s and early 30s, on the eve of the founding of the American Musicological Society. Though music was highly valued in this country as both high culture and popular entertainment, the systematic study of music was only beginning to gain recognition as a serious scholarly pursuit. Music programs in American universities offered primarily vocational training for such careers as performer and music instructor. It was not until 1930, with the appointment of Otto Kinkeldey at Cornell, that an American university offered a faculty position for musicology. Cornell also awarded the first American doctoral degree in Musicology in 1932 to J. Murray Barbour, later a President of the AMS. Over the next sixty years the field of musicological research burgeoned in American University programs, as music scholars gained influence and professional stature. A small group of American musicologists, passionate about their own research and devoted to the expansion of the field, formed the nexus of the movement which would transform the role of music study in American higher education for later generations of scholars. Among these ground breaking scholars were the founders of the American Musicological Society: Helen Roberts, George S. Dickinson, Carl Engel, Joseph Schillinger, Charles Seeger, Harold Spivacke, Oliver Strunk, Joseph Yasser, and Gustave Reese. In the early decades of the twentieth century, American musicologists depended on European resources, both financial and institutional, for the support of their scholarship. The Internationale Musik- Gesellschaft served as the international society of the field and produced its primary scholarly journals. The U.S. branch of the IMG functioned as the center for American scholarly debate on music between 1907 and 1914. When World War One brought the dissolution of the European IMG, however, its American offspring could not survive independently, and all formal organization of musicologists temporarily died out. The International Musicological Society, founded in Basel in 1927, filled the gap left by the IMG in Europe, but an attempt to establish an American branch of the IMS in 1928 was largely unsuccessful. Though the Music Teachers’ International Association, founded in 1876, served as a forum for the exchange of debate on music, the MTNA increasingly attracted those interested in practical - Page 4 - American Musicological Society records musical instruction. The music community felt a growing need for an organization devoted specifically to musicalogical research. New York Musicological Society, 1930-1934 By the early 1930s musicology had gained a place in American academics; universities began to offer faculty positions in musicology and to institute programs of musicological training for their students. The scholarly world was ready for the revival of an American society of musicologists. “[I]n New York City, a small group of men interested in the rapprochement of science and music met on the evening of January 20, 1930 with the purpose of organizing a purely local society.”[1] This group of men and women, calling themselves the “New York Musicological Society” envisioned a select membership of active scholars, meeting once or twice a month to read papers and engaging in organized debate on scholarly topics. “The interest of the group is, it is true, avowedly systematic rather than historical, stressing speculative and experimental methods in close liaison with the vanguard of the liaison with the vanguard of the living art of music.”[2] Over the course of its brief existence the NYMS held thirty-five meetings and had published three volumes of its Bulletin. Even at the time of their founding the New York Musicological Society foresaw the dissolution of their local group when the interest and resources were found to organize a society of broader scope: “It is hoped that this will form the nucleus for a National Society.”[3] On June 3, 1934, a handful of members of the New York Musicological Society met to discuss the organization of such a society, dedicated to advancing “research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning.” They passed the following resolution: The New York Musicological Society